SINT Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Sub-Committee on International Trade, Trade Disputes and Investment of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, February 28, 2002

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1530

The Chair (Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre, Lib.))

Mr. Howard Mann (Consultant and Trade Lawyer)

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1535

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1540

The Chair

Mr. Howard Mann

The Chair

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1545

Ms. Elizabeth E. May (Executive Director, Sierra Club of Canada)

The Chair

Mr. David Runnalls (President and Chief Executive Officer, International Institute for Sustainable Development)

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1550

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1555

The Chair

Mr. Svend Robinson (Burnaby--Douglas, NDP)

The Chair

Ms. Elizabeth May

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1600

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1605

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1610

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1615

The Chair

Mr. Christopher Henderson (Chief Executive Officer, The Delphi Group; Past Chair, Canadian Environment Industry Association)

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1620

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1625

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1630

The Chair

Mr. Svend Robinson

Ms. Elizabeth May

Mr. Svend Robinson

Mr. Howard Mann

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1635

Mr. Svend Robinson

Mr. Christopher Henderson

Mr. Svend Robinson

The Chair

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1640

Mr. Howard Mann

Ms. Elizabeth May

The Chair

Mr. David Runnalls

The Chair

Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland--Colchester, PC/DR)

The Chair

Mr. Pat O'Brien (London--Fanshawe, Lib.)

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1645

Mr. Robinson

Mr. Pat O'Brien

Mr. Bill Casey

Mr. O'Brien

Ms. Elizabeth May

Mr. Pat O'Brien

Ms. Elizabeth May

Mr. Pat O'Brien

Mr. Howard Mann

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1650

Mr. Pat O'Brien

Mr. David Runnalls

Mr. Pat O'Brien

Mr. Howard Mann

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Svend Robinson)

Mr. David Runnalls

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1655

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Svend Robinson)

Mr. Bill Casey

An hon. member

Mr. Bill Casey

Some hon. members

Mr. Casey

Mr. Christopher Henderson

Mr. Robinson

Mr. Christopher Henderson

Mr. Casey

Mr. Christopher Henderson

Ms. Elizabeth May

Mr. Casey

Mr. Christopher Henderson

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1700

Mr. Casey

Mr. Christopher Henderson

Mr. Bill Casey

Mr. Christopher Henderson

Mr. Casey

The Chair

Mr. Grose

The Chair

Ms. Rebecca Last (Director, Programs and Policy, Canadian Environment Industry Association)

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1705

Mr. Grose

The Chair

Ms. Elizabeth May

The Chair

Mr. Howard Mann

Mr. Grose

The Chair

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CANADA

Sub-Committee on International Trade, Trade Disputes and Investment of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

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NUMBER 024

l

1st SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Thursday, February 28, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

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[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre, Lib.)): It is 3:30 p.m., and we do have a quorum.

    We have a wonderful group of witnesses who will be spending the afternoon with us, talking about their views concerning the development of a negotiating position for the Government of Canada and trying to make suggestions. They will also give us their views on WTO issues as they relate to their field of expertise.

    What I thought we would do is have brief opening remarks from our witnesses, and then we will open the floor for questions and comments. Hopefully we'll be able to wrap up our meeting before 5:30 p.m.

    It's my honour to introduce the first witness, Howard Mann, a consultant and trade lawyer. I also suspect he worked in the Government of Canada at some point in his past.

    As well, we have with us Mr. David Runnalls, who is with the International Institute for Sustainable Development; and Rebecca Last, who is the director of programs and policy with the Canadian Environment Industry Association. I understand Mr. Christopher Henderson will also join us a little later.

    Mr. Mann, we will start with you. We'd like to welcome you to the committee. If you can do so in less than five minutes, just briefly give us the lay of the land from your perspective.

    Mr. Howard Mann (Consultant and Trade Lawyer): I'll try to keep it as brief as possible, but I'm not sure I can make five minutes.

    I have indeed worked for the Government of Canada before, Mr. Chairman. I was a lawyer with the Department of Justice, specializing in international environmental law, work, climate change, the NAFTA agreement, biodiversity, and a number of other international environment areas. It was from that background that I got into the trade-related work.

    In my comments today, Mr. Chairman, I am going to focus primarily on the implications of the Doha agenda for environmental law-making within Canada, and in a sense phrase it in what I perhaps might posit as an additional role for this subcommittee. This subcommittee and its parent committee have been active over the last several years in terms of looking at policy issues from a trade perspective, or at the trade policy issues and policy-making in the trade area. I think the committee is to be commended for that, and especially for getting out of the gate so early after the Doha ministerial statement was adopted. I would like to posit an additional role for this committee over the next few years as Doha goes ahead, and then explain why I think it is so important.

    In my view, Mr. Chairman, I think this committee should become extremely active in terms of monitoring the negotiations as they go on—not just monitoring the broader policy issues, but monitoring the draft text, monitoring the negotiating positions as they evolve, and monitoring what's being said by whom, why and where it's being said, and what its implications are. That's a very different function from a broader policy agenda perspective, and it would mean quite an enhanced role for this subcommittee, in my view. It would be an ongoing role, properly scheduled, pre- and post-negotiating sessions, with the negotiators and accessible to the public.

    Why do I think that's so important? First, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it's important because, in reality, trade law plays a quasi-constitutional law role in Canada today. Its impact goes well beyond whatever law or legislation is adopted in order to implement a trade agreement, and it really covers the whole range of law-making in Canada.

    In terms of a constitutional or quasi-constitutional feature, it creates obligations that are binding on governments and binding on this Parliament, as well as on the parliaments of the provinces and territories. It creates a judicial system to review compliance with those obligations, as initiated by complaints by states for trade measures, and by individual foreign investors for investment measures. Under both the WTO and under NAFTA, it also creates an enforcement system that puts bite behind the judicial process. Most importantly, Mr. Chairman, it covers all future law- and regulation-making in all the areas of government activity at the federal and provincial levels unless they are expressly excluded from the trade agreements. Those areas of express exclusion are few and far between, and I think that's an extremely important point to note in terms of the scope of these agreements.

    In terms of the potential impacts of Doha on environmental management in Canada, your research paper that was distributed to us focused on paragraphs 31 and 32. In my opinion, that represents a very small fraction of the Doha statement's links to the environment. If we were to look at paragraph 6 of the Doha ministerial declaration, for example—and I'll just itemize a few in a little bit more detail, and then list a number of others—you would see that it actually, in fact, reasserts the legal supremacy of trade law over domestic environmental law. To put it another way, an environmental measure that has any impact on trade—and presuming investment goes into the new round on a foreign investor—must in all ways comply with trade law, whatever it looks like in the post-Doha negotiating results. That's a supremacy clause written right at the very beginning of the Doha ministerial statement.

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    If one looks at the provisions on agriculture in paragraphs 13 and 14, while they code it, there is in fact an express link to environmental issues when they talk about dealing with non-trade concerns in the agricultural area. Everybody involved in the round understands that this means, first and foremost, agricultural issues or environmental issues and environmental services provided by agricultural lands, agricultural areas, agricultural trade, and so on. It's going to be extremely important to balance the environmental functions of those lands, which all our provinces try to do as well. There are restrictions on uses of agricultural lands across Canada for environmental reasons. We are going to have to remember that when we go through the agricultural issues, and make sure the trade issues are properly balanced with those.

    There are issues in paragraph 15 on services, like what will be covered or the extent to which environmental services will include things like the provision of drinking water. That in turn leads to questions about the management of freshwater resources and so on.

    Paragraph 16 deals with market access for non-agricultural goods. This is one of those paragraphs that, in three very short words, brings in the entire environmental agenda. In that paragraph, they talk of the reduction or elimination of tariff barriers, but also of non-tariff barriers. When you bring those in, it in essence means all environmental and health protection laws. They fall within the category of non-tariff barriers, so when paragraph 16 talks about the reduction or elimination of non-tariff barriers, it is looking not exclusively at, but certainly is including environmental and human health protection measures. That obviously has an important impact in terms of any disciplines that might evolve from the negotiations pursuant to paragraph 16.

    It also presents an opening, Mr. Chairman, to actually roll back some of the gains that environmentalists have been quite supportive of in some of the recent decisions of the appellate body of the WTO—decisions that have opened and provide a greater breadth of understanding in terms of assessing what “harmful” means in terms of harmful products, what “like products” means and how to include environmental issues in that analysis, and in addressing process and production methods. These were issues that were actually closed to the WTO dispute the resolution process, until they were opened up by the appellate body. A number of countries would like to roll back those advances through this round.

    In short, then, paragraph 16 is a major negotiating area for environmental and human health protection roles, and one of major importance to Canada.

    Just quickly, I'll list some other paragraphs in order to essentially put them on the record: paragraph 17, on intellectual property rights; and paragraphs 20 to 22 on investment. Some of you may have already seen the book we put out last year—one I wrote for the International Institute for Sustainable Development—on the investment issues in chapter 11 of NAFTA. Those are the same kinds of issues. We have a few copies of the book here if you would like, and if you need others for the committee, we can certainly make sure others are made available. Just let us know. It covers all the investment issues quite thoroughly, I think.

    There will be issues in government procurement and the ability of governments to maintain green procurement programs for their own purposes, under paragraph 26.

    Paragraph 28 brings in rules on subsidies, and expressly includes fisheries issues and major environmental resources concerns. The dispute settlement understanding and issues of transparency, amicus groups, and so on, have major relationships to environmental and sustainability issues. Paragraph 37, on transfer of technology, is the same sort of thing.

    Paragraph 51 provides a mechanism for the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment to undertake environmental assessment of the round as it goes forward. I think Mr. Runnalls would probably have a few words to say about that, but as it stands, it is just woefully inadequate, in my view. It really runs a high risk of “greenwashing”, as it were, the progress and round.

    I just have a couple more points to make.

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    Specifically in terms of paragraphs 31 and 32, paragraph 31(i) of the Doha statement deals with the relationship to multilateral environment agreements, or MEAs, but it states that any work done under that paragraph is only to apply “as among parties to the MEA in question” and the WTO as well. If you have states that are parties to the WTO agreements but not to the MEA, any work under that provision will not be applicable to them.

    In my view, Mr. Chairman, this is unequivocally the worst environmental section of the entire Doha statement. It will actually create a legal disincentive if mechanisms go ahead that way. If that is actually followed, it will create legal disincentives for states to join multilateral environment agreements, because you'll be creating a mechanism that will establish greater trade rights for states that are not party to those agreements than for states that are party to it. At least, that is a very significant risk that is out there now because of the way that's phrased.

    In addition to that, it actually runs the risk of rolling back judgments that have already been issued and constructive uses of MEAs that have already been made by the appellate body in the dispute resolution process, ones in which they have actually minimized and avoided the party or non-party issue and dealt with the agreements at their face as examples of what are appropriate mechanisms in an environmental area, irrespective of the party or non-party issue. We actually see the potential for both significant harm and a significant rollback of the existing law under that paragraph.

    Paragraph 32(i) focuses on the effect of environmental measures on trade. That's fine enough. I don't particularly have a problem with that. If an environmental measure isn't accomplishing anything or if it's a disguised barrier to trade, it's perfectly appropriate to look at its effects on trade. No problem. What I'm concerned about is how that fits in with the negotiating agenda for the reduction of non-tariff barriers, whereas in the need to focus on the effect of trade rules on environmental measures—the opposite, if you will, the inverse—one sees it only in the context of the CTE process and the environmental assessment process of the CTE in its really weak and recommendatory form, as opposed to a negotiating context. We see a real disproportion in the way in which the agenda is set up or the review mechanisms are set up for those two kinds of issues.

    In summary, Mr. Chairman, I think the Doha agenda has several points of impact on environmental management in Canada, both in domestic management and international agreements. I haven't provided it, but if you wish, Mr. Chairman, but I have an annotated version of the agenda at home. It goes through the agenda and highlights all the points in which, in my view, there is an environmental issue. I could e-mail that to the clerk tomorrow.

    The Chair: That would be useful.

    Mr. Howard Mann: Just to come back to my initial point and close on that, Mr. Chairman, given the range of impacts on, and the range of interaction of the Doha agenda with environmental management issues across a broad range of areas of concern, that really does highlight the need, in the environmental context, for the ongoing supervisory role of the House of Commons and of this subcommittee as the negotiations proceed. The impacts are potentially going to be very large. They're going to be large in terms of the role of Parliament and what Parliament may or may not be able to do in a post-Doha atmosphere or context, and it's extremely important for Parliament to be actively involved in the process, in my view.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Mann.

    We have just been joined by Ms. Elizabeth May, from the Sierra Club of Canada, as well as by Christopher Henderson. We welcome both of them.

    Since we have started, perhaps we will move on to Mr. Runnalls, with your permission, Ms. May. Would that be all right with you?

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    Ms. Elizabeth E. May (Executive Director, Sierra Club of Canada): Yes.

    The Chair: Mr. Runnalls, you don't have to read all of your submission into the record. We will deem it as read if you want to just give us a synopsis of your views. We will then come back with questions.

    Mr. David Runnalls (President and Chief Executive Officer, International Institute for Sustainable Development): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no intention of reading all that to you. I also apologize that it's only available in English. We received fairly short notice of the hearing, so we didn't have time to produce a French version. We can furnish one to the committee later.

    I should briefly say who I am. I'm the president of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. We're a non-profit organization located in Winnipeg. Amongst other things, our job is to look at the relationship between trade and sustainable development.

    This is a little embarrassing, Mr. Chairman. We didn't plan this, but Howard Mann has done a lot of our work on investment, and Elizabeth is a member of our board. We didn't realize we were all going to be here at the same time. This is not a plot by us to capture your environment agenda, although if we had known we were all testifying, I think we probably would have tried to do that.

    I will only take about five or six minutes, you'll be relieved to know, Mr. Chairman.

    Let me set out our basic principle. Our basic principle is that trade liberalization and environmental protection can be mutually reinforcing, but it's not automatic. We actually believe it will be very difficult for developing countries, for example, to actually move to something like sustainable development without the kind of capital that will be provided by increased market access to the markets of developed countries. But there's no guarantee that we'll get the results we want. Trade liberalization can lead to increasing rates of environmental degradation, again especially in developing countries, if the proper policies are not in place to protect the environment.

    I'm sure you know, Mr. Chairman, that this is the year of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August. If we have learned anything about sustainable development over the years, it really means the integration of economic policy and environmental policy. You can't really do one without the other. It's perfectly obvious that, in the case of trade, a disproportionate number of the major disputes that have gone through the dispute resolution process of the WTO have involved the trade agenda colliding with the environmental agenda.

    The environment isn't a luxury you can deal with after you manage to conclude trade agreements. There are all kinds of hidden traps—there are many of those in the Doha statement—and if governments don't pay attention to them when they're negotiating and when they're implementing these agreements, they can come back to bite those governments, simply because these two systems really are very closely interrelated at this stage.

    I just want to make basically five or six points for the committee's consideration, on the secrets to success in the post-Doha period, at least as far as the relationship between trade and sustainable development is concerned. The first is the need for a clear set of goals and objectives for trade liberalization.

    One of the problems with the trade liberalization agenda, and often one of the reasons for the argument between the trade people and the protestors outside the room, is that there is no agreed upon set of goals. Trade liberalization has become a good in itself as far as the trade negotiators are concerned, and an evil example of the worst forms of globalization as far as many of the protestors are concerned.

    I would suggest that the WTO and the governments negotiating in the WTO should take some time, at the beginning, to work out some real, final goals for the next round of negotiations. Is it about economic growth only? In that case, there is some debate as to what extent the relationship is really a very robust one in the case of many developing countries. Is it about poverty alleviation? Is it about expansion of markets? Is it about the achievement of sustainable development? I would suggest to you that if Canada could get that one right, it would be a major contribution to this debate. Otherwise, there'll be endless arguments about the purpose of the exercise.

    I'd also submit—and this is another area where Canada, as one of the creators of the WTO, could be useful—a much greater focus on changing the role and composition of the WTO. The WTO has not yet worked out that it is no longer a negotiating forum of 65 countries. It has more than doubled since the negotiation of the Uruguay Round. With China and with the prospect of Russian membership, it now has something that looks like universality of membership, and that makes it a different kind of organization.

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    The WTO is a nightmare at the moment. The machinery-of-government people would have a heart attack, Mr. Chairman, because the WTO has fifty committees, all of which are committees of the whole. Every country is a member of every committee of the WTO. That may be doable for Canada, but for a developing country that has one or two staff people in Geneva, it's a nightmare. As a result, the organization periodically seizes up.

    It also operates entirely by consensus. No matter what its size, one country that can't live with the consensus can delay the proceedings for weeks or months. That's just not doable in the modern day and age.

    Thirdly, we need to focus much more on the problems of developing countries. I think it's arguable that Seattle would have gone wrong in any case even if there were no protesters and even if the quadrangular countries—Canada, the United States, western Europe and Japan—had their act together, because the developing countries felt locked out. They basically felt they were getting marginal or no benefits, and their experience since the Uruguay Round has pretty much confirmed that.

    There will be a need to begin to accommodate a development agenda. Whether this is a development round or not, there will be a need to pay more attention to developing countries. Amongst other things, that means capacity-building. Doha's declaration is full of stuff about capacity-building, and that means—and I think there's a real role here for Canada as well—helping countries to develop their own capacity to analyse these issues from their own point of view. Until now, capacity-building at the WTO has been training customs officers and training officials in how to interpret the rules. I think capacity-building needs to mean helping to give governments the wherewithal to carry out these negotiations properly.

    Another point, Mr. Chairman, revolves around the area of standards. Anybody who has been in the forest industry and anybody who has been in the mining industry will know about the kinds of disputes there have been over international standards and international standards-setting. There are provisions for setting international rules and regulations for standards. ISO 14000, which is the environmental one, is perhaps the most obvious example of this. There is a real potential to begin to develop standards in a whole range of industries that will avoid some of these disputes, but, again, it won't work if developing countries feel the standards are being developed without their participation.

    Most developing countries are quite incapable of participating in those negotiations. They don't have the resources, and they don't have the technical capability. Canada does. The Canadian Standards Association is a highly respected participant in these discussions. This is another area in which Canada could begin to forge some useful relationships that would be useful to Canadian industry, as well as being helpful to the environment. In the capacity-building role here, Mr. Chairman, I'd commend CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, which really has begun to develop a decent capacity to work on these issues. It never had that before.

    We clearly also need progress on the environmental agenda. I would submit to you that the politics of this are now such that the EU and the United States cannot come away from the table without an agreement that has some serious environmental concessions. Public opinion in Europe is becoming increasingly green; you can see the pressures on the European trade officials. I also remind you that President Bush only got his fast-track negotiating authority through the Republican-controlled Congress by one vote, so you don't need to move many votes in Congress to kill off any potential agreement. There will therefore be a lot of pressure on both the European Union and the United States, and perhaps on Canada, to make some real environmental progress here, to build some environmental considerations into the WTO in ways they have not done before. That, I think, points to three or four win-win solutions, Mr. Chairman. I'll give them to you, and then I'll stop.

    I don't think the real problem lies with the traditional trade and environment agenda, which used to be about PPMs and about conflicts between trade agreements and the multilateral environmental agreements. Howard has pointed out where there still is a problem. Many problems have not gone away, but have instead been pushed into the background. I think the new agenda is as follows.

    One issue is the whole question of international environmental governance. We have this 300-pound gorilla at one end, the WTO, and we have these many international environmental agreements at the other end, the 50-pound weaklings. We have to find a way—and perhaps we could talk about this a bit later—to strengthen some of these environmental organizations so that there is a more equal conversation.

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    Second, transparency is very important—and I'm sure Elizabeth will talk about this. The WTO is still really an opaque organization. It has only been since recently that you could actually get a copy of the agenda for any of its committee meetings. You certainly couldn't get into them, because there are no observers. In fact, until recently, even the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank couldn't go to a meeting of the WTO because they weren't allowed in.

    This is an organization that doesn't like scrutiny of any sort. Its dispute resolution panels operate entirely in secret. It now publishes the results of its deliberations, but not necessarily the submissions of the parties. And there is virtually no opportunity for interested civil society organizations or members of the public to submit amicus briefs—not even expert amicus briefs. One could cite countless examples of that, and it just breeds suspicion on the part of the people on the outside. Think what you will of the protesters, but the fact remains that the WTO feeds this by being a genuinely secretive organization. I don't think it's in Canada's interests to have the WTO continue like that.

    Finally, Mr. Chairman, I point out two other things. There are two pretty obvious win-wins. The first one is the whole question of subsidies, something of interest to people in the part of the world where my institute is located. Countless environmentally perverse subsidies are built into the policies of most governments. They are trade-distorting and are supposed to be WTO-illegal. A concerted attempt to both identify many of these subsidies and get rid of them would provide a solution whereby the trade economists who dislike them because they are trade-distorting, and the environmentalists who dislike them because they actually harm the environment in many cases, could begin a collaboration to both identify these kinds of subsidies and do something about them.

    Finally, Mr. Chairman, we have the old bugbear of agriculture. Howard mentioned that the word “environment” appears all through the WTO Doha agenda or statement. It does, but as a result of it being everywhere, it's therefore nowhere.

    Rather than the paragraph cited in the committee's instructions, I would suggest that you would do well to look at the negotiations on agriculture; at the negotiations on services, on which I'm sure we'll hear a bit from Rebecca and Chris Henderson; and at a number of the other negotiations. Those agriculture negotiations are all going to be about the environment. The European Union is going to come with a program of assistance to farmers as stewards of the land and protectors of biodiversity. No longer are they going to be subsidizing agriculture or boosting farmers' incomes. There will be a major set-to about this. I think there is an argument in favour of agricultural subsidies that are environmentally sensible, but it's going to be very difficult to determine which are and which aren't. That might be one of the real challenges both of the round and for Canadian policy.

    I've gone on too long, Mr. Chairman, and I apologize. It's a rich agenda, though. As I said, I have therefore submitted a more detailed brief for anybody who wants to take a look at it.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Runnalls. We will consider the brief as part of the record.

    We will now hear—

    Mr. Svend Robinson (Burnaby--Douglas, NDP): On a point of order, could we have agreement from the committee to append the briefs to the minutes of these proceedings, so that those who are following the proceedings can also have an opportunity to review them?

    The Chair: Yes, we said that at the beginning, and we will do that.

    Ms. Elizabeth May, the floor is yours.

    Ms. Elizabeth May: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I must start by apologizing for the fact that the notice of the committee hearings reached me at a point when I was leaving for a conference in Europe. I just got back last night, and now I'm presenting an oral brief that's taking form as I speak. I put down some notes on some of the things I was going to say, but, predictably enough, my friend Mr. Runnalls from IISD has mentioned them.

    Let me try to give an overview of the concerns of the Sierra Club of Canada—and again, I do apologize for not having a written presentation.

    As you know, we are a national, membership-based, environmental organization with chapters and groups across Canada. We would rather not have any program relating to trade. We'd like to think it wasn't our business, and we'd like for the trade people not to think the environment was their business. But the crossover has happened in recent years as a result of experience. I would like to stress that. There's nothing about Sierra Club of Canada's views on globalization that would suggest we have any ideological problem with trade agreements. We didn't historically, but since we have seen the impacts of the FTA and then the NAFTA, we have paid close attention to the WTO. I therefore want to point out some real-life experiences with those agreements, and relate those experiences to the Doha agenda.

    I think the conference I attended in Lyons, France, was actually relevant. It was co-organized by Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong, with the title “Globalisation and Sustainable Development: Is Ethics the Missing Link?”. One of the opening speeches was by the current president of the International Union for the Conservation Nature, Yolanda Kakabadse Navarro. I think she summarized the issues we all grapple with extremely well in one very succinct question: Is the earth a planet, or is it a market? That's just a way of looking at a world view of how we look at our natural environment.

    In the ten years since Rio de Janeiro, it has become very clear that the agreements that we have negotiated, which in WTO speak are referred to as MEAs—generally referred to as environmental treaties, and including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity—were agreed to at the Earth Summit to be agreements that are binding upon all parties. In that very same period of time, though, the Uruguay round was going on and coming up with a new and revised GATT, with the creation of the WTO.

    As Mr. Runnalls has suggested, they certainly have different power levels. Our view in the Sierra Club of Canada is that the WTO agreement has all the teeth and the Rio agreement has an impressive set of gums. We don't have enforcement. What's more, with the existence of the WTO, and specifically the creation of the Committee on Trade and Environment, one would think the environmental movement would perhaps be pleased that there is a Committee on Trade and Environment within the WTO. We would have been pleased if that committee had seen its job as being to determine whether the trade negotiations, the trade agreements, and the implementation of those agreements were creating an unintended negative impact on the environment. That is a question the WTO could pay attention to. Unfortunately, the Committee on Trade and Environment set out to determine whether there were any environmental agreements out there that had a negative impact on trade.

    The committee raised the spectre of whether agreements such as the Basel Convention, which has trade sanctions as an enforcement mechanism, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which has trade sanctions as an enforcement mechanism, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which has the same.... As you know, they categorized these as multilateral environmental agreements, and posed the question about whether they were GATT-illegal. They didn't answer the question, they merely posed it.

    I would submit to this committee that the phrasing of that question has been sufficient to weaken new environmental agreements. We haven't had an international environmental agreement with enforcement mechanisms since the WTO asked that question. When you examine the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer—in which Canada showed leadership in ensuring that we had trade sanctions as an enforcement mechanism—and our performance at Kyoto just ten years later—where we said heading into the negotiations that if trade sanctions were included as an enforcement mechanism in the protocol, Canada would not sign—it's a very marked difference in approach. In policy terms, the only intervening event that explains this is the creation of the WTO and its asking of those questions.

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    I agree very much with David Runnalls, in that the whole question of the WTO and the environment and the intersection of the agendas, should be looked at at a higher level of extraction, if you will, at the question of global environmental governance and global governance at all.

    Is the WTO the right place to resolve problems and environmental disputes? It's the completely wrong place to do so. Not only does it lack in environmental expertise, the expertise that it respects is entirely that of thorough knowledge of the trade agreements. While that is very useful in sorting out issues purely related to trade, when you're essentially looking at issues of public policy around the environment, you don't have the right people in the room. As you've heard, even in Doha, environmental concerns and issues that relate to the environment crop up all through the ministerial declaration, but there was virtually no environmental capacity in the negotiators there. Environment ministers were not doing the negotiations, trade ministers and bureaucrats were. As a result, the agreements don't really reflect the key issues that need to be examined.

    I would urge this committee to look at this question in the lead-up to Johannesburg and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, at which Canada, frankly, is pushing the issue of global governance. But do not just look at global governance in terms of global environmental governance.

    As you know, Minister of the Environment David Anderson is currently chair of the governing council of the United Nations Environment Programme. He plays a large role there in pushing for the United Nations Environment Programme to receive more support, funding, and so on. But the issues are much broader than that.

    Fundamentally, the WTO is the wrong place to resolve environmental issues. We need to have proper capacity within the environmental agreements so that they don't end up before trade panels, because they won't do well there.

    I want to talk a little about the FTAA, as well, because I see it's on the agenda for today—at least, I hope I understood that correctly—and I want to reinforce some of the points Howard Mann has made.

    Just going through the Doha agreement in terms of what they've said, we're particularly concerned about paragraph 31, and the following statement:

The negotiations shall be limited in scope to the applicability of such existing WTO rules as among parties...not prejudice the WTO rights of any Member that is not a party to the MEA in question.

That clearly creates a disincentive to ratify conventions.

    To give you some examples of this effect, the United States is not a party to Kyoto and the United States is not a party to the biodiversity convention or the biosafety protocol, yet international rules on how we might pursue the objectives of those conventions need to be clear for all members of the world community, not just for those who are members of the convention. In another trade world, in the NAFTA world of chapter 11, we had a very odd result that suggests how dangerous this can be. The S.D. Myers case was a case under the investment rules. I'll talk about it a little more, but just this one aspect relates to paragraph 31.

    S.D. Myers is a company in Ohio that disposes of hazardous waste through incineration. It complained about the fact that Canada wasn't exporting PCB waste to the United States in a limited period of time. In resolving this issue, Canada relied—as we should have—on the Basel Convention on hazardous wastes, which specifically exists to encourage member states to avoid transboundary traffic in hazardous wastes.

    What was interesting about the way the dispute resolution panel dealt with that case was that even though the Basel Convention is specifically mentioned in NAFTA as basically having a firewall around it—the Basel Convention can operate without being hampered by NAFTA rules—the chapter 11 panel ruled that since the United States hadn't ratified Basel, Canada couldn't rely on it even though we had ratified it. Basel was listed in NAFTA, so we were trying to rely on it. And I'll come back to this in relation to transparency, because there are some other points. But this is a concern.

    In relation to another multilateral environmental agreement, there's also paragraph 19. I may have missed it because I came in late, but paragraph 19 of the ministerial declaration from Doha specifically instructs the council dealing with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, the TRIPS agreement. I think this has had an impact far more profound than many countries realized it would have when they agreed to the TRIPS agreement.

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    For those who may not be familiar with TRIPS, it puts any country within the WTO under the specific positive obligation to change its own laws so that they operate basically in a framework of intellectual property patent laws. They would be pretty much like those of the United States, and everybody would operate knowing that those are the patent laws.

    The Convention on Biological Diversity is specifically referred to in paragraph 19 of the Doha ministerial declaration. There is again a perceived conflict, because in the pre-1990-to-1992 period, before the Earth Summit, the biological diversity convention was trying to...this document was negotiated with leadership from Canada—and I would stress that it was strong leadership—to recognize indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge, and to recognize that if a pharmaceutical giant came along and discovered that a leaf of a plant had tremendous pharmaceutical value but that knowledge was always in the hands of traditional peoples, there should be benefit sharing.

    As of yet, there is no definition of what that benefit sharing is or how it might ever operate. The mere fact that this kind of language is in the biodiversity convention is why the elder George Bush refused to sign the biodiversity convention in Rio in 1992 while Canada and all the other countries around the world went ahead and did it. This is potentially dangerous in again having the WTO asserting the supremacy of TRIPS agreements and analysing whether the biodiversity convention can do what it did.

    I want to stress a point here that relates to both the climate change and biodiversity conventions. All the global conventions we're talking about to protect the environment were not unilateral actions. They were negotiated by the same set of governments that sits around the table at the WTO, so getting some policy coherence is really important. It's not acceptable to have the WTO reigning supreme—as it currently does—and batting down treaty obligations made by the very same governments.

    These conventions are multilateral by nature, and by nature, they are therefore not designed to give one party a trade advantage over the other. Nonetheless, they're being subjected to the kind of analysis you would get out of asking if it is the least trade-restrictive measure possible. That's not an acceptable test to put to an environmental agreement. We need to again find some form of firewall to protect legitimate environmental activities, regulations, and global conventions from the impacts of trade negotiations that were never intended to do that.

    I'm going to close on the subject of investment. I think people would agree that investment in the Doha agenda is given a very hesitant nod. Paragraph 20 looks at the development of modalities to eventually negotiate an investment treaty. They're skittish after the OECD's failure to develop a multilateral agreement on investment, while our experience with investment gives us cause for great concern about the text of the draft FTAA.

    I'll just give two examples of what we're dealing with. I would say this whole area of trade work, but particularly the investment provisions of chapter 11 of NAFTA, fall into a category of what I would describe as the privatization of public policy. These are issues that are resolved by governments through the democratic process, and then we find they're privatized.

    I'll quickly give you two examples in regard to chapter 11. Many people in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade—and I know this because I sit on the Sectoral Advisory Group on International Trade that was appointed by Pierre Pettigrew to provide advice.... In that context, people from the department will quite often say chapter 11 is being used in ways we never intended. Minister Pettigrew has said chapter 11 is used in ways we never intended. Unfortunately, chapter 11 language sits there unchanged and has given private, multinational corporations the opportunity to sue governments. It's unprecedented, but we're getting quite used to it.

    I think I should give you a health warning here, because as you wrap your minds around these two facts, I think your heads will hurt. They're completely bizarre.

    In the S.D. Myers instance, for a nine-month period, the Government of Canada banned the export of PCB waste to this Ohio company that I mentioned. S.D. Myers brought a chapter 11 challenge about the nine-month ban. At all material times in that nine-month period, it would have been illegal under U.S. law to import PCB waste into the United States. Our associated organization in the U.S., the Sierra Club, brought a legal challenge, and it was found that, yes, it was illegal to import PCB waste into the United States under U.S. law, but Canada was still held to owe S.D. Myers $55 million for banning its export during a nine-month period.

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    Let's take that one step further. This was the first time Canada actually went to a court to challenge a ruling by one of these private...on the questions you've asked about what the WTO could do to become more open, the answer is absolutely anything, because it is so closed right now. The same applies—even more so—to these private dispute resolution panels. As David Runnalls has said, the WTO panels are secretive, but the chapter 11 panels are also extremely secretive and public policy is resolved in a closed room.

    In this case, Canada has appealed to the Federal Court. As a group of interveners, the Sierra Club, the Council of Canadians, and Greenpeace attempted to get intervener status. We were opposed by S.D. Myers, we were not helped by the federal counsel on the case. We are now considering an appeal for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada over our ability to intervene in an issue about our government making a decision that was completely consistent with our international obligations under the Basel Convention and was about something that was illegal in the U.S. anyway.

    The most recent one of these kinds of cases is a case involving a company called Crompton, which used to be Uniroyal. I'll leave it with the clerk, but I have a copy of “Notice of Intent to Submit a claim to Arbitration under section (b) of Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement over the Canadian government's decision to phase out lindane coated seeds”, that last part meaning the coating of Canola seeds. Why did Canada want to phase out lindane-coated seeds? I would love to say it was because the Government of Canada was moving proactively to deal with a very hazardous, persistent organic pollutant, but the reason actually was that farmers in the U.S., where a lindane coating on seeds is illegal, were complaining that it was unfair that Canadian farmers could still coat their seeds with lindane. The coating of seeds with lindane in Canada was a trade irritant about which U.S. farmers complained. They are getting rid of lindane-coated seeds in Canada, and the U.S.-based company that makes the lindane that it can't use in the U.S. for this purpose anyway is suing Canada for $100 million. They claim damages of approximately $100 million, and they want the reinstatement of their registrations. This one is just starting—I'll close on this—but this is falling into the rabbit hole of never-never land.

    We have to watch these investment procedures carefully—and I didn't even touch on anything that opens up to investment through the Doha round. I'll therefore make one quick addition, in that paragraph 31(iii) deals with the question about barriers to environmental goods and services. It has also raised some warning flags for many people in the environmental movement who are concerned about the privatization of water provisions at municipal levels. There's much here, but I'll stop with that.

    Thank you for allowing me to appear without a well-constructed written brief.

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    The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation. You did very well. If you have any documentation that you would like to send to the clerk, it would be more than welcome. We will also consider that documentation as part of the proceedings.

    Mr. Henderson, are you ready?

    Mr. Christopher Henderson (Chief Executive Officer, The Delphi Group; Past Chair, Canadian Environment Industry Association): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    We've distributed copies of our presentation. It's in a presentation deck format that you have in front of you in hard copy.

    I'm here today in my capacity as a member of the executive of the Canadian Environment Industry Association. I'm the immediate past chair of the association, and Colin Isaacs, the current chair, has asked me to present this presentation to you today. Accompanying me is Rebecca Last, a director with the association.

    We certainly have a lot of sympathy for, and largely support the remarks you've heard from the last three speakers, since most of the companies in our association are not only committed business people, but also committed environmentalists. The specific items I'm going to put before you, though, relate to how we can use our competency in environmental goods and services to take a larger share of that market in a global context, and what that would involve.

    I would note initially that we've certainly been at the forefront of many environmental activities globally. What you should know is that the Canadian Environment Industry Association, by measurement by Statistics Canada, comprises around 220,000 people across this country, from coast to coast to coast, who earned $22 billion worth of revenue in 1998. The majority of that, around 90%, was domestic, but a growing share is also based on export earnings.

    It's our view in the industry that we not only want to maintain that market share, but that we can increase it significantly over the next three to five years, as certain trends globally are leading to larger expenditures on environmental goods and services. In the industry, we effectively are committed to putting in our own time and money, and we are looking for partnerships with the Government of Canada to see if we can increase our market share significantly.

    You should know that our market globally is not small. Currently, it's now over $1 trillion dollars; by around July 2002, it will be $1,022 billion. Our current market share is around 2.5% of that, which is actually quite low. By comparison, the United States' market share is about 22% of that. In fact, evidence has shown that some of our market share has been slipping, and we have asked ourselves why. What appears pretty straightforward is that for work related particularly to water and waste water infrastructure, waste infrastructure, and activities like that, you're increasingly going to have to be more assertive in penetrating foreign markets. You're going to have to bring more to the table, particularly in developing countries, such that they can deal with the burden of covering those costs. You're going to have to bring more to the table in terms of equity, financing, investment, and things like those.

    As for the exporters in Canada, there are about 200 or 300 active exporters. There are around 4,000 to 5,000 actual companies in the sector, but those active exporters are quite significant. For example, one company in Guelph, Ontario, RWDI, has quadrupled exports of its air pollution prevention services in the last four years and is now approaching $20 million. You also have large companies like Delcan, which now does $200 to $300 million worth of environmental services around the world, particularly in Latin America and Asia.

    We feel, however, that our challenge lies in the comparison to other countries, particularly the U.S., Germany, France, and England. We don't have a really well-developed platform for exporting. We're not bringing our companies across the country, particularly small and medium-sized companies, together to determine where we really want to go. For example, in Mexico, where there's enormous need for water and waste water, what more can we offer to that market that is part of our NAFTA arrangement, for example?

    The new generation partnership that we're suggesting already exists in part. Through our Environmental Exporters Council, the industry works very closely with various departments of the Government of Canada, and particularly Industry Canada, Foreign Affairs, and Environment Canada, but I would say that what we're doing right now is more or less promotional work. We're not getting into the transactional side that can really help to leverage the capacity in goods and services that we have to provide.

    In terms of our specific objectives in this new generation partnership, we'd like to take our market share from 2.5% of the global market share to 3.5% to 4% over a period of around five years. We think that would be a realistic period of time for doing that. That would represent around $315 million more in export revenues for environmental goods and services in 2003, and it would create around 2,500 sustainable, high-end jobs across the country. It would also require us to increase the flow of human resources into the sector.

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    That sector is increasingly more skilled. While there is a plumber's dimension to the environmental sector in terms of making sure that water flows cleanly and that waste water and waste are properly treated, there is increasingly more of a technology- and knowledge-based dimension to the sector.

    We want to position Canadian firms in key sectors in Latin America, which seems to be a major focus of environmental companies in the country. In order of priority, in a sense, I would say the major markets that we're focused on are the growing climate change market, which we believe is real and should be addressed—and our association does support the ratification of the Kyoto protocol; water and waste water markets; air markets; and waste and urban infrastructure markets.

    Essentially, on the new generation partnership, we're suggesting two new things. One is an enhanced export readiness component in which we're bringing in more small and medium-sized companies from around the country. There are 4,000 to 5,000 companies in the sector. And the markets in Canada for environmental goods and services are not growing, by the way. They've pretty much plateaued, but that's quite understandable. We've done a lot of things right. There's more to do, but there's no major growth in the sector. We need to bring more of those companies into an export mode, so that they can help to keep their jobs sustainable and maintain the jobs they have.

    The export mode includes the skills development side and the business development assistance side that the companies need. From the standpoint of our the association, we're very pleased to offer senior mentoring assistance by companies that have been successful exporters—companies like Jacques Whitford and Associates in Halifax, which is led by Hector Jacques, an immigrant from Trinidad who created a company of almost 2,000 engineers. Hector would be delighted to help small companies see how they could present what they have to offer to global markets.

    We think the second important thing to do is create a project and venture transaction platform—and I can give you some concrete examples. A water and waste water work worth around $600 million is planned for northern Mexico. The Mexicans have a lot of value attached to Canadian goods and services in that sector; however, the American government is saying it will pay a lot of equity up front for that. We're in discussions with organizations like EDC on what we can do there, but we have to plan to be more strategic in order to do more. The project and venture transaction platform is targeted that way.

    We think we have a number of things in these platforms already in place. We very much support the Export Development Corporation. We are glad they are proceeding to improve their environment oversight. We'll see how the current changes that occurred last year will work. We supported those changes made by the Ministers of the Crown, but we think they've started to address their environmental impact assessment side. They may not be all the way there—I'm sure Elizabeth will bring a set of times to the committee—but we think they're going in the right direction. We've certainly found both EDC and the Canadian Commercial Corporation to very receptive to supporting environmental goods and services companies. We have a very good relationship with them.

    We speak very highly of the Sustainable Cities Initiative. We well know that one of the major challenges in the environment comes in dealing with urban development around the world, in the big cities of the world, and in the small towns of the world. The Sustainable Cities Initiative that has been led by Industry Canada has brought Canadian expertise to key cities like San José, Costa Rica; Córdoba, Argentina; Tsingtao, China; Katowice, Poland; and others. We feel this is a very good way in which we can bring the full set of urban environmental management services to specific cities around the world. We think there's a lot of room for expanding this.

    We very much support the work of CIDA; we endorse the view that Mr. Runnalls expressed a moment ago. We think CIDA is getting a better grasp on how it addresses sustainable development and environmental priorities. And we also support the increase in support given to the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service.

    I will leave the business case aside for a moment and answer about it during questions, Mr. Chairman. There are three things we need to look at and do beyond this to really get the maximum value of Canadian goods and services for our own income and economic development, but also to give that economic and environmental capacity to the developing world.

    First, we have to have a better strategy. Our strategy is not well developed between government and industry, to be perfectly honest with you. There is a lot of activity, but not a lot of targeted focus on where we want to go. In the private sector, we're willing to put our money into that and work with you, but we need some of your money so that you can bring the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, CIDA, Industry Canada, and Environment Canada to the table to see how we target key markets—the border zone in Mexico, key Latin American markets, key markets in Asia, and key markets in central and eastern Europe. We would also like to do more in Africa. We hope the African agenda that has been talked about in the G-8 and other processes will offer opportunities there.

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    The second thing that needs to be done is a renewal of the Sustainable Cities Initiative. We think it's very important to continue and expand it.

    The third thing—and we know the Government of Canada has considered this—is the creation of what is called a foreign direct investment agency. This is probably the single weakest structural disadvantage that we have in the sector, relative to our competitors. Every OECD country save two—and they are only small OECD countries—and all other G-8 countries, have an ability to go into a water and waste water project in Chile or in Thailand. Those countries are quite legitimately asking what money of ours is being put on the line if we're bringing in our goods and services. We have to bring equity capital as well as our goods and services to be able to do that work.

    If you're an American company, you can bring the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, OPIC, a government agency that will take a share of the private-sector risk, at around 30% or less. If you're a British company, you can bring in the Commonwealth Development Corporation. The simple story, particularly in environmental infrastructure, is that those countries are providing more of the services when we have Canadian capacity that's just as good. In water and waste water, no country in the world is better in water and waste water quality in terms of services or technology, particularly in membrane and ultrafiltration and other technologies like that.

    Where those countries want those services, we want to be more competitive, so we think the consideration of a direct financing agency for Canada is important. It could be under EDC. EDC's equity financing capacity is quite muted. It's not strong. They got the power five years ago and they have only done six transactions since that time. That's not enough. That's not going to get us more market share in either our sector or any others.

    We support the view of ensuring in trade agreements—and we've expressed this before in this committee—that you need the oversight to make sure the environment does not suffer. We support the views expressed by the previous speakers. We also think we can bring a different side of the agenda into play, and that is increasing our environmental exports. We effectively want to do more of that. We think we have many of the pieces in play, and we support many of the things that are done and in place. But we think that if we were to have a more targeted strategy, if we enhanced the Sustainable Cities Initiative, and if we created a foreign direct investment agency, we would be stronger for it.

    By the way, in all those cases, we put our own money out. This is not the private sector asking you to give it to us. The foreign direct investment agency would be paid back. Our sector's repayments to EDC are better than those of just about any other sector in the country. We do pay those back. These are not subsidies or grants. These are repayable equity financing arrangements. With the Sustainable Cities Initiative, we don't get the capital. The capital in fact goes to the cities abroad that look to our services. We're quite happy to compete on very open trade and commercial terms, but we feel these are opportunities for the Government of Canada.

    Thank you.

º  (1630)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much for your excellent presentation.

    We now look to the floor for questions and answers. If we can have the question specifics, it is my hope that the answers will also be specific. Let's skip the preambles and just get to the point. In this way, we will be able to get a lot more achieved within the next 59 minutes or so.

    We'll start with Mr. Robinson.

    Mr. Svend Robinson: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank the witnesses not only for appearing today before this committee, but for their ongoing work. Certainly it has been very helpful to me and to my colleague Joe Comartin, the environment spokesperson for our caucus, in responding on some of these very important issues. I will take your advice, Mr. Chairman, and just put a couple of very specific questions.

    In today's national Southam Izzy Asper editorial—this is the editorial that is now imposed on all fourteen Southam newspapers across the country, newspapers in which there is no opportunity to respond in a local editorial—there is a glowing tribute to the virtues of bulk water exports. In fact, the headline in the Montreal Gazette version of the editorial is “A commodity like any other”. In the words of the editorial, it suggests at one point, “Just as oil has enriched Alberta, why not exploit water surpluses?” Why not treat water like any other natural resource?

    Since this is a critically important issue and one that has been flagged by a number of you, I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to explain for the record why it is so important, first of all, that the WTO not open the door in any way to bulk water exports. I think there's a real concern that it may have been done with respect to trade in environmental goods and services, but why is it so important that water not be treated like any other commodity?

    Ms. Elizabeth May: Thank you for the question. I missed that editorial.

    I don't think the modalities the Government of Canada has used to achieve its objective are sufficient, but the position of the government that we should not have bulk water exports is certainly sound. It is not a good like any other. It's a natural resource. I know the chairman has urged us not to go into preamble, but it is hard not to mention that it's the very stuff of life. In hydrological systems, we don't create water. One needs to recognize that while it sometimes seems to be a renewable resource, we don't make new water. We basically have what water we have.

    In the context of Canadian interests, particularly in relation to climate change, we don't have surplus water. The work of Environment Canada in the Canada Country Study anticipated that levels of CO₂ build-up in the atmosphere are now pretty well locked in. One of the things that we'll experience as a country—and what they found to be the most profound impact on Canada—is the impact on the availability of fresh, clean drinking water. Fresh, clean drinking water is a minute percentage of the overall global accessible water.

    To tie this in very much to Chris Henderson's presentation, if Canada is interested in making sure that places in the world that don't have enough water get some, we need to improve their municipal infrastructure and the infrastructure at the village scale, so that people can access what water they have. But if we go down that route of exporting bulk water at any time, then, as Lloyd Axworthy certainly pointed out when he was a minister, the concern is that, under NAFTA, we can never turn that tap off again. So it's an ecological reality and, given the trade regime that we now have, it's even more enforced by the implications in terms of not going down the road of bulk water exports, no matter what Mr. Asper says.

    Mr. Svend Robinson: I wonder if one of the witnesses might comment on the potential impact of the recent Doha accord with respect to the issue of bulk water exports. I know Maude Barlow, from the Council of Canadians, has suggested that the door is in fact being opened to these exports. What's your reading of the provisions of the agreement?

    Mr. Howard Mann: At this point in time, we don't know if the door is being forced open or not. I think that's the issue. It's whether the end result of Doha will actually impose mechanisms that prevent governments from regulating the export of bulk water or not, or impose conditions ensuring that any export that does take place is under proper environmental controls.

    At some point in time, there may well be circumstances warranting the export of water, provided that such exports are properly environmentally controlled. In the negotiations that will go on in regard to services, there is certainly the potential for the WTO in particular to end up in a situation in which it effectively forces the multinationalization or bilateralization of water services where water flows across the border, or there might be opportunities to export it in bulk in one form or another. If the services language that results from Doha is such that it includes the provision of water as an environmental service or as a service, then that could come about. It could actually force governments to allow the export.

    So I think you're quite right, Mr. Robinson, in noting that this is a potential. I don't think it has materialized yet, but I think it is certainly there.

    If I can come back to my own original point, that's the kind of language, in my view...it's one thing to say as a policy perspective that nothing in the Doha process should force the export of fresh water. It's another thing for the House committee to maintain oversight over that process in order to make sure the end result doesn't do that. I think that's the critical second function.

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    Mr. Svend Robinson: I'll just ask one other, brief question, if I may, Mr. Chair.

    Mr. Christopher Henderson: Before you do, Mr. Robinson, from the ecological side and the trade side, I agree with the comments that have been made. One of the things of which you should be aware, and one of the things not covered in the bulk water discussion so far, is that the infrastructure systems that we have in place right now are very sensitive to water levels and volumes. They are built on vacuums and flows and gravity feeds. Two summers ago, the Great Lakes were close to a metre lower than their average volume. If they go down two metres, most of the water and waste water infrastructure systems around the Great Lakes won't work, because they draw at a certain level, they feed at a certain level, and they're are calibrated to be at that level to make them work. It's just like building a science experiment with your kids.

    There is an ecological impact here, but it doesn't take a lot to upset balances. People forget that the inflow of water into the Great Lakes each year is 0.003%. The rest of the stuff just stays there. You're not playing with the whole of the Great Lakes, you're playing with 0.003% in an average year. In a weak year, you're playing with 0.001% or 0.002%. Take a bit of that away—it doesn't take much—and water infrastructure systems don't work. We have invested billions and billions of dollars in those systems, and the impact is as sure to be an economic one as it is an ecological one.

    Mr. Svend Robinson: Thanks very much.

    I have just one other question, if I may, Mac.

    I must say that I'm very concerned—in fact, alarmed—with the provision in article 31 that you referred to. That really is a very significant disincentive to countries signing on to MEAs if they haven't yet done so, especially if they can effectively gain a competitive advantage, a market advantage, by not signing those agreements.

    I appreciate that, at this point, we're still at a preliminary stage at which this is subject to negotiation and so on. But when I look at the fact that there has already been—I think many of us would argue this—a very significant chilling impact from the existing so-called trade deals—and I say so-called because a lot of them had nothing to do with trade at all, but everything to do with corporate power—there has already been a very significant chilling impact in Canada. How many major pieces of environmental legislation have been adopted in Canada since 1993, since the Liberal government came into power? I stand to be corrected, but I don't think any have been.

    When you have that chilling effect, since the committee is going to have to make a report and a recommendation on this, I wonder if you could just perhaps make some recommendations on what you would suggest that we do around this particular section. I think it's a matter of very grave concern. If Canada wants to see more countries signing on to multilateral environmental agreements, why on earth would we be supporting the negotiation of a provision that actually could be a disincentive to sign those agreements?

    The Chair: Is there a volunteer?

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    Mr. Howard Mann: David was just asking me how it got in there. To my understanding, it got in there through the American negotiators debating with the EU negotiators at the last minute, with none of them having any environmental experience or expertise. That resulted in this provision. It does reflect the American absence from conventions like the biodiversity convention, the biosafety protocol, Kyoto, and so on.

    Beyond that, as I said in my own comments, I think this is an extremely dangerous provision. It's one that happened because of the negotiating dynamic—largely by accident, as it were—at the last minute, as part of negotiating dynamics with people who simply didn't understand what they were negotiating. I don't think anyone intended this result; nonetheless, it's there.

    From my perspective, the best thing Canada can do is simply deep-six this whole negotiation on the relationship to MEAs. In my view, there's simply no real problem. The WTO appellate body has addressed the issue of the relationship of environmental agreements to trade law in a fairly constructive way in the shrimp-turtle cases and in other cases. In fact, it has looked at this party and non-party issue both in the environmental context and in other contexts, one of which is the Brazilian-Canadian aircraft battle. They've looked at OECD rules as part of their analysis, but Brazil isn't part of the OECD, of course. The WTO has already used different mechanisms to address this relationship in a fairly constructive way.

    As an issue in the public mind, it's largely a hangover of debates that occurred in 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1992, when the WTO or GATT case law was very different from what it is now. With the evolution of the law to this point, I think the best thing Canada can do is simply say we don't to need to negotiate this point, that the way it's structured is bad, and that we should just leave it alone.

    Ms. Elizabeth May: Briefly, I completely agree with what Howard said, but this whole section, “Trade and environment”, should be understood to have been last-minute and poorly thought through. I didn't address it earlier, but I'm concerned about paragraph 32(iii), which again gets the Committee on Trade and Environment busy on eco-labelling standards. They are in search of solutions where there isn't a problem.

    This goes back to the question of beefing up the relative strengths of the environmental global governance mechanisms that are out there, whether you're talking about UNEP or the secretariats at various conventions, so that parties and governments have confidence in the ability of those organizations to establish some peripheral boundaries, in order that the trade guys don't get into these issues.

    The Chair: Mr. Runnalls.

    Mr. David Runnalls: I don't want to prolong this, Mr. Chairman, but I think there's a lesson here for the Canadian negotiating team as well.

    One of the real problems at Doha was that almost no one had any real environmental expertise in their negotiating group. These things tend to get in there as part of...these are like big poker games, in the sense that if you give me this, I'll give you that. When people who don't have any real expertise in this area are writing these sections, you get the things in there like a time bomb, and they're stuck.

    I agree with Howard. I think the appropriate strategy for Canada is to try to get this thing off the agenda. The WTO has dealt with this through the appellate body. This isn't a problem anymore, and we shouldn't be resurrecting it. One of the problems is that when these things get on the table, unless they get taken off, they materialize as part of a side deal somewhere else. This is very dangerous and useless. We don't need this. We've solved this problem.

    The Chair: Mr. Casey, I know you're next on the list, but Mr. O'Brien has to catch a plane. Would you give him the luxury of going ahead of you?

    Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland--Colchester, PC/DR): Sure.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. O'Brien.

    Mr. Pat O'Brien (London--Fanshawe, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Casey, for your usual good cooperation.

    I have an observation and a question. First of all, I fully agree with Mr. Robinson's point that water is hardly a good like any other. I don't think too many other people, other than the editorial writer, would subscribe to that idea. We do live in a democracy, though, so we get a lot of crazy opinions sometimes.

    Anyway, on the—

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    Mr. Svend Robinson: There is a transcript, you know.

    Mr. Pat O'Brien: That's okay. I've never worried about anything I've ever said.

    On the concern about the export of water, I just want to probe that a little bit. I don't have it right in front of me now, but it's my understanding that paragraph 31(iii) of the WTO Doha declaration refers to the exports of environmental goods and services—for example, solar- and wind-powered generators, and sewage services—but it does not refer to water resources. While I understand the concern, one also has to look at a text.

    I hear much about the fear people have about things. I say to them that I'm interested in their fear, but I ask them if they can point to something concrete or if it's just a fear that's not based on anything. I'd just like to point that out.

    I'll just say that I certainly agree with the idea of committee oversight. I know Minister Pettigrew has taken a lead in trying to ensure greater participation of parliamentarians, be it in the FTAA or certainly at the WTO. I've been involved in helping him with a bit of that work. Our new minister, Bill Graham, is highly qualified, despite the silly comments of the leader of the opposition— I'm sorry, with all due respect to my friend—that this—

    Mr. Bill Casey: That's why I let you go first.

    Mr. Pat O'Brien: They weren't your comments, Bill, they were your leader's. They were kind of silly, because the man is highly qualified to be the new Minister of Foreign Affairs.

    Mr. Graham has been highly involved in this, as have been other people on this committee, so the government is very supportive of this committee oversight and of the greater involvement of parliamentarians. That's my observation.

    My question relates, though, to investment. There has been something like a 400% increase in Canadian direct investment abroad since 1985, and I think 46% of our GDP is dependent on exports. How do we protect these investments? What thoughts do any of you have on the ways in which we protect these investments?

    Ms. Elizabeth May: If I could, nothing about the Sierra Club's objections to the investment provisions that we've seen and the ones that were proposed internationally, has to do with leaving our investments at risk. Our objections have to do with having created an entirely new and what I think is a perverse definition of an investment or of an expropriation.

    In the case of, for instance, expropriation of real property—a Canadian company goes in, sets something up, and someone snatches it and nationalizes it in another country—that's already covered under international rules around expropriation. None of us would have any objection to provisions stating that if a company's actual assets are expropriated without due process, they should of course receive compensation.

    As David Runnalls has said, and according to Canadian negotiators, the problem has been that the negotiators negotiate these things when they don't anticipate the ways in which they're going to be used. I really don't know that any of them understood that chapter 11 could possibly have been used...as you said, people get scared about things. If we had said at the time that a U.S. company that doesn't like an act of the Canadian Parliament banning a neurotoxic gasoline additive could use chapter 11 to come back at us, and that we'd drop our regulation, put this stuff back in gas, and pay them a penalty of $13 million, people would have thought we were paranoid in the extreme.

    The investment provisions have been used in a way that suits the private interests of corporations and hurts democracy, and it's really hard—

    Mr. Pat O'Brien: We're all well aware of chapter 11 and the pieces of it, yes.

    Ms. Elizabeth May: That's why we don't feel any agreement that actually protects Canadian investment overseas is something to which we object.

    Howard wants to jump in.

    Mr. Pat O'Brien: No, I wasn't asking whether or not you objected. Are there any other specific thoughts on a mechanism to protect this very important investment?

    Mr. Howard Mann: Mr. Chairman, first, I agree with what Elizabeth says. It's not necessarily a question of whether there should or shouldn't be an investment agreement. It's what's in it and what the objective is. There are ways to protect foreign investors and foreign investments without the kinds of expansive and damaging interpretations that we've seen so far.

    There's also another large issue—and if you don't mind, I'll use this to advertise something I was going to leave until the end. On March 18, here in Ottawa, the IISD, together with the Public Policy Forum, will be hosting a one-day workshop on international investment law. We'll be looking at its rationale; at its raison d'être; at the directions in which it has been taken; at the balance between private rights and public goods and public welfare, a balance that has been impacted by these kinds of agreements; and, in some depth, at the current interpretations under the chapter 11 cases. I've been asked by the IISD coordinator of that project to extend an invitation to the committee to send representatives, whether it's at the political level, staff level, or whatever you may wish. If you wish to participate in that meeting or have a representative do so, we extend that invitation to you, and we can coordinate that at any time before March 18.

    In the course of doing that, there's a real, live question about what the role of investment agreements should be. To date, the reality is that they have been addressing one issue only, and that's the protection of private rights. Under chapter 11, they've been doing that in a way that has led to the most expansive interpretation of what those private rights are. They go well beyond just protecting an investment that has been made—the nuts and bolts of a factory, and so on—and the assets involved, to actually creating independent, private, international economic rights, without counterbalancing any of those with responsibilities, with duties, with obligations. They put in place a dispute resolution process that's cloaked in secrecy at the whim or wishes of the investor, a process that in fact and in law actually overrides domestic law through the “choice of law” clause that says it can be litigated under the international rules, which only relate to the investor's rights, or it can be litigated under the domestic rules, which inherently create a balance between the rights and responsibilities. The investors are saying they'll use the international system that only relates to their rights. Who can blame them once they have the instrument there to do it?

    So those are the kinds of issues and problems that come up. It's not a question of whether Canadian investors should be left flapping in the wind, as it were, but one of how to balance those issues in an era when the exercise of these rights is going to be very prevalent?

º  (1650)  

    Mr. Pat O'Brien: Mr. Chairman, I would just like to finish on this.

    Not to oversimplify it, but to try to be succinct, I think I hear you saying we need something like chapter 11, but we need a much clearer chapter 11 that is much more nailed down. Is that a fair summary?

    Mr. David Runnalls: No, it's not.

    Mr. Pat O'Brien: It's not? Then I don't really think you answered my question, because you're saying we can't leave these investments out to flap in the wind. You're saying you don't want an improved chapter 11, but you still haven't told us what you do want.

    Mr. Howard Mann: I think we need a much different kind of investment instrument. It may include investor protections, but it won't be limited to investor protections. We'll deal with the rights of states in the context of the lifelong regulation of an investment, which may be 100 or 150 years or more today; which will deal with the responsibilities of investors; and which will not be limited solely to those issues that we find doubt with now in chapter 11. Unless that expansion occurs, simply to repeat chapter 11 in the context of the WTO, the FTAA, or any other process like that would be an error, in my respectful view.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Svend Robinson): I think Mr. Runnalls has something to add to that, and then we're going to turn to Mr. Casey.

    Mr. David Runnalls: I think the short answer to your first question, certainly in the interim, is bilateral investment treaties, of which there are lots.

    One of the things that concerns us is that there are these country-to-country agreements on mutual treatment of investment. For the vast majority of countries, I suspect Canadian investors are protected by them in terms of the crude stuff of expropriation and so on.

    I think we're getting a crazy quilt of these things. There are all kinds of these arrangements amongst countries. Having looked at this a little bit, it's our view that we probably do need an international agreement on investment, if only because this plethora of bilateral treaties is getting very confusing. Things are going to get very difficult.

    It's also our view that it probably shouldn't be in the WTO. The WTO really is an overloaded institution. It has way too much to do given the structure of it. Its dispute resolution mechanism probably won't work very well when you're dealing with investments. It's okay for one-time-only transactions.

    A lot of trade professionals—and I'm thinking here of Sylvia Ostry, of the University of Toronto, for example—are of the view that the WTO already has been given too much to do by governments, and that giving it something else as complex as investment may get somewhat the same result that we got when it was given the TRIPS agreement. Lots of trade professionals think the TRIPS agreement doesn't belong in the WTO. It's just overloading an organization that's already overloaded.

    We would like to see discussions begin specifically for the creation of an international agreement that actually balances off some of the obligations and rights Mr. Mann was talking about. The discussions may be in the context of the WTO, but would be outside the WTO itself. We would need a new regime to deal with such an agreement.

    The WTO is a very seductive thing for governments, because it is the only international organization that actually has a way of enforcing its decisions. That makes it very attractive. When you get into the dispute resolution mechanism, you either have trade sanctions or some sort of decision that governments will have to abide by. But that system is really starting to creak. It's already overloaded. If they end up with literally hundreds of investment disputes in that system, I suspect it will break down.

    So, yes, we need an investment regime, but I don't think we need it in the WTO.

º  (1655)  

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Svend Robinson): Before I call on Mr. Casey, I wonder if you could forward the information about the March 18 conference to the clerk, Mr. Mann. The clerk can then circulate it to all members of the subcommittee, because I'm sure there will be great interest in it.

    Mr. Casey.

    Mr. Bill Casey: Thank you.

    First of all, I want to point out to Mr. O'Brien that I didn't agree with him when he said that—and I don't mean I didn't agree with you, Mr. O'Brien. I didn't agree with the chap you referred to when he made that statement.

    An hon. member: What was his name?

    Mr. Bill Casey: Something Who.

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    Mr. Bill Casey: Anyway, perhaps part of the reason for Mr. O'Brien's questions is that we now have such a big team down in Washington trying to sort out our softwood lumber agreement that was supposed to be cast in stone because we were supposed to have free trade but now we don't have free trade. A couple of the problems with all these things is the unpredictable directions they take, and the dispute mechanism systems. Last night, we were debating the bill that would adjust our laws to accommodate China's entry into the WTO. You can only imagine what's down the road with that agreement. There are protection mechanisms included in it, but they look very cumbersome, difficult, and politically loaded. Anyway, I'm sure that's why he was asking those questions.

    Mr. Henderson, if I remember correctly, you said the market for the environmental industry in Canada is not projected to grow. Did I hear that?

    Mr. Christopher Henderson: Yes. Statistics Canada started tracking our industry about five years ago. While there has been some growth, the growth has been seen largely because more companies have been reporting. We're at around $20 billion in domestic activity. If we kept things static, that might grow with the rate of inflation, at 2% or 3%. No particular major drivers are going to increase that sum. For good reasons, markets like waste markets are being eliminated through things like industrial ecology, through the diversion of waste into use in secondary products, etc., and that's good. On the other hand, some new markets arise, but things are not growing that fast overall.

    Now, if there was a major activity looking at our environmental infrastructure in water and waste water, and making sure we have tertiary water and waste water treatment systems across the country—which we'd obviously like to see because it means business for us and it's good for the environment—that would drive it faster.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Svend Robinson): Or if we ratified Kyoto.

    Mr. Christopher Henderson: Or if we ratified Kyoto, yes.

    By the way, about a third to half of our members are companies in the clean energy orbit, so we include that part of the delivery of service. Companies like Bombardier, DynaMotive, and others in the biofuels area are members of our association. But in terms of what's on the line on the current track, the growth is not there, so a lot of companies have been looking for exports to maintain themselves and to grow. That was why I made that point.

    If we had a new driver, like a major activity in green infrastructure or a major activity in terms of compliance with the Kyoto regime, there's no doubt that would grow the industry significantly. We've been on record on both counts, supporting both what the government has done in terms of green infrastructure and wanting governments to do more, and I'm already on the record as supporting Kyoto.

    Mr. Bill Casey: There's always the case of the Sydney Tar Ponds.

    Mr. Christopher Henderson: There are always the Tar Ponds, yes, but I'll let my colleague address that issue. She's much more knowledgeable than I am on that particular issue.

    Ms. Elizabeth May: I'm afraid you're right. There may always be the Tar Ponds.

    Mr. Bill Casey: They're a monumental problem.

    Anyway, what target markets does your industry look at? What continents, and what countries?

    Mr. Christopher Henderson: In terms of regions, the most prominent markets are going to be in Latin America, Central America, and South America. That seems to be partly due to the globalization movement and partly due to trade patterns north and south. That seems to be an area most of our companies are targeting quite extensively. Geographically, the second big market would be southeast Asia, principally around the Chinese market. As many countries as there are around the world, there are many places to which our companies export, but those are two of the main focuses they have related to it.

    Sectorally, if we look at our major strength in water, waste water treatment, and water resources management, that's a major issue. Waste management and waste diversion are major issues. We class industrial process technologies—getting into natural resources manufacturing and production, into bringing in technologies that reduce the waste stream through efficiency—as environmental technologies. They're smart environmental technologies, if I can use that label.

    In the climate change sector, there are some strengths that we do have and some strengths we don't have, as you would expect. I would have to say the big ones are Latin America and Asia geographically, and then water and waste water, the environmental infrastructure area, and the natural resources production area. Those are the main target markets.

»  (1700)  

    Mr. Bill Casey: Thank you.

    I'd just like to say that I know Hector Jacques quite well, and he is an incredible person.

    Mr. Christopher Henderson: He is that, and one of his vice-presidents is a member of our board. Their company is an active member.

    Mr. Bill Casey: Really? What's his name?

    Mr. Christopher Henderson: Earle Hickey.

    Mr. Bill Casey: Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Casey.

    Mr. Grose, do you have a question?

    Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.): As usual, I don't have much of a question. As you can tell from my sign, I'm not a regular member of this committee, but I'd like to give you a little bit of advice.

    Your acronyms today—WTO, TRIPS, and so on—are acronyms that go over my head. I know what the WTO is, but Doha is another one, although I think that's a place where a meeting was held at one time.

    I've learned a lot here today, but that's not all that important. Elizabeth, you're one who really should know this: in order to get government to do anything, to move, you have to get the people out there wanting it. Turning up with 5,000 demonstrators who throw rocks isn't going to do it, but there is a way of doing it if you can convince government that people want this.

    Today, we've talked about the things that should be done. I know they should be done, and I know what direction you're moving in. But if you think I or anyone else would get elected in the election based on whether or not we export water or don't export water, forget it. My people make cars and trucks. All they're interested in is whether we sell cars and trucks. If we have to sell a few litres of water along with every car or truck that we export, okay, we'll do that.

    I know what we should do, and it doesn't bother me. If you want me to run on exporting water, fine, I'll run on that issue. I won't get elected and won't be here next time to help you, but that's okay. I had a life before this, and I'll have a life afterwards. But you have to get people in line with you. You have to convince the people of this country that this is worthwhile, that it has to be done. I know it has to be done, but you have to do something either in concert with us or on your own.

    Elizabeth, your group does a very good job pretty well on its own, but you have to get the people of the country convinced that what you're saying is an emergency. I think it is, but until that time....

    Governments don't lead parades. They see the parade going by, and then they run along, try to catch up, and try to get in front. It's like the guy who was wandering in the desert and said he was lost. He asked where the people had gone and said he had to find them because he was their leader. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is.

    If you have an answer for me, please tell me. If you need help from us, I'll listen to you.

    The Chair: Rebecca.

    Ms. Rebecca Last (Director, Programs and Policy, Canadian Environment Industry Association): Thank you, Mr. Grose.

    You mentioned that car and truck manufacturing is a very important base for the economy in your riding, and that people who don't have jobs don't make happy voters. I can certainly understand and appreciate that concern.

    I think a very key part of the message that we bring, as an association and as an industry, is that we're a new, young industry. The kind of potential that we offer is the same sort of growth in jobs that the Ottawa area has seen. As a politician, your industry is no longer the driving force behind this region's economy. With 220,000 people employed in about 5,000 environmental companies across Canada, many of those are very small companies that would like to grow and hire more people. The contribution that implementing environmental performance can bring to the economy is the message I think we'd like you to take home.

»  (1705)  

    Mr. Ivan Grose: I can use that.

    The Chair: Ms. May, did you have a comment?

    Ms. Elizabeth May: Thank you.

    Just briefly, I would say that the way we present in small, public meetings is very carefully, with an acronym alarm attached at all times, and while expressing things in certain ways.

    On these issues of globalization, the increased power of corporations, and the diminished power of governments—which is how I characterize it—the public is way ahead of environmental groups and the government. During what was really a groundswell of opposition to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, I was talking to an MP about it. He said it was never going to interest people in my riding, because it was too complex and too arcane. He came back a couple of weeks later and said he'd stopped at a gas station in his riding, and on the corner of the gas station counter was a petition against the MAI. Several pages of it were full, and he realized at that point that it had gotten out there.

    These issues resonate for people. Speaking quite frankly, the critical challenge for the anti-globalization movement is that, post-Seattle, post-Quebec City, and particularly post-September 11, mass mobilizations of people on the streets have been criminalized for all kinds of reasons. Dissent has been criminalized as an activity. For the handful of people who break the law, the rest of the movement can no longer effectively use the streets.

    But how well can we use Parliament? How much democracy happens in Parliament? It's another issue altogether, but when I see what happened to the Species at Risk Act, I wonder what happened to democracy in parliamentary committees, when all parties agreed and we got great amendments. Fighting for democracy ends up being what I feel the environmental movement has to do to make sure our voices get heard, in order that your voices get heard and we can in fact change.

    But I agree with everything you said, and it's good advice.

    The Chair: Mr. Mann, did you have a final note?

    Mr. Howard Mann: Yes.

    To follow up on the linkage of this to jobs, let me go back about fifteen years to a decision the Conservative government of the day was facing on the fisheries in the North Atlantic. The ministers of the day refused to take a decision when they knew fully well that the cod stocks were disappearing. They absolutely refused to stop the fisheries and make sure they went onto a footing that would be sustainable. As a result, all the jobs were lost.

    What we see today is that scenario being repeated in a lot of other areas. I'll give you the example of your car industries and the car industries today. Whether Canada ratifies Kyoto or not, what we're doing now in climate change won't make a bit of difference to where Kyoto and the climate change issue end up in ten years. The fact of the matter is that the cars made in your riding today will not be the same cars made in twenty years. Not one of those cars will be made the same way. If Canada doesn't get ahead of that technological curve and doesn't invest in the new engines, the non-polluting engines, the fuel cell engines, and whatever else, and if Canada doesn't use the opportunity now that ratification of Kyoto would entail in order to force technological change, to force advancement, to force updating, and to force the next generation of technologies and the next generation of jobs, we will be buying those cars now made in Canada from Mexico and elsewhere, and you won't have any constituents employed in that sector in twenty years.

    Mr. Ivan Grose: Please, inundate me with all this information, and then I can pass it on.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: That's obviously just a suggestion, and I'm sure our witnesses will follow through with it, Mr. Grose.

    On behalf of my colleagues of different political stripes, I want to thank you individually and collectively for the excellent presentation that has been made today. Your interventions were very good, and I want to thank you for greatly enlightening us today.

    As my colleague Mr. Robinson indicated a little earlier, if you do have some specific documents that you want us to consider as part of the submission to the House of Commons, please do provide them. As well, it will help us greatly if you do have a specific recommendation that you want to pass on to the committee. I think that would be exceptionally useful.

    Mr. Henderson, I know you were at some sad gathering. Please accept our deepest condolences, whether it was for a friend or a family member. Rebecca filled in for you very well until you arrived.

    With that, we will adjourn until 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 13.